But then, in 1990, a hero emerges
May 14, 2016 11:44 AM Subscribe
Filmmaker Noah Sterling presents The History of Tentacle Porn Animated! (SFW)
Sterling also produced Bite Size Comics, a video series which condenses epic Marvel story arcs into a few entertaining minutes. He currently works as a freelance illustrator for Marvel, who asked him to take the videos down, but The Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War are findable with a bit of effort.
Sterling also produced Bite Size Comics, a video series which condenses epic Marvel story arcs into a few entertaining minutes. He currently works as a freelance illustrator for Marvel, who asked him to take the videos down, but The Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War are findable with a bit of effort.
In the early 90s the Cinema de Paris in Montreal would show Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend as one of a rotating assortment midnight stoner movies (along with like, The Wall, Baraka etc), and it's among the most repulsive and disturbing things I've ever seen. Not only that, when we went to go see it again a few months later it was a totally different movie.
posted by Flashman at 1:18 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Flashman at 1:18 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
By the way, some years ago the folks at the Picasso museum in Barcelona did an exhibition on the influence of shunga on Picasso's porny drawings. Part of it was on shunga themselves, part of it focused on Sada Yacco's European tours, and part of it centered on tentacle porn (Hokusai's, Picasso's and other turn of the century artists'). This interview with the museum director is in Catalan, but you can see the relevant tentacle/ fish tongue porn around 2:35, 4:35 and 5:40. Evidently, NSFW.
posted by sukeban at 1:46 PM on May 14, 2016
posted by sukeban at 1:46 PM on May 14, 2016
"the most repulsive and disturbing things I've ever seen... when we went to go see it again ..."
Wait, what?
posted by el io at 2:19 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wait, what?
posted by el io at 2:19 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
> ...when we went to go see it again a few months later it was a totally different movie.
It might be because of your intoxication the first time around, or it might be because it's a series and you were watching different installments.
posted by ardgedee at 2:40 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
It might be because of your intoxication the first time around, or it might be because it's a series and you were watching different installments.
posted by ardgedee at 2:40 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
This seems as though it's exoticising Japanese culture using a variation of the noble savage trope by attributing censorship and other forms of government repression to Western influence, with it all beginning with "a group of American missionaries who have decided to take a trip to Japan in the late 1800s." The Wikipedia entry on shunga mentions multiple cases of that sort of book being banned during the centuries preceding the Perry Expedition etc. in the latter half of the 1800s, which cursory Googling appears to corroborate.
posted by XMLicious at 5:45 PM on May 14, 2016
posted by XMLicious at 5:45 PM on May 14, 2016
A college friend of mine had Urotsukidoji 1 on VHS. He'd wait until people were roaring drunk at parties, then throw that on the TV and watch the reactions.
posted by delfin at 6:34 PM on May 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by delfin at 6:34 PM on May 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
Urotsukidoji is one of those words that shows up, from time to time, on the internet. When you happen upon it, it generally signifies at least some entertaining reactions.
posted by JHarris at 8:31 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 8:31 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
This seems as though it's exoticising Japanese culture using a variation of the noble savage trope by attributing censorship and other forms of government repression to Western influence, with it all beginning with "a group of American missionaries who have decided to take a trip to Japan in the late 1800s."
It's simplifiedand the clothes are more Fire Nation than real kimono, but yeah, it's basically what happened with porn, prostitution and male homosexuality. The Tokugawa government controlled sexuality very tightly, not in the pro-*prohibition* sense that is closer to Western societies but under tight *regulation* to avoid anti-government activities. Hence the establishment of yuukaku or closed "pleasure quarters" where licensed prostitutes (sold into debt bondage as children to the brothels) were contained, like Yoshiwara in Tokyo or Shimabara in Kyoto. The Meiji government was forced to end the debt bondage system that kept prostitutes in servitude after an international incident caused by coolie trafficking to Peru, but the occupation government was the one that banned licensed prostitution in 1946, turning it into a more underground business.
To illustrate Tokugawa attitudes to control of sexuality, kabuki was originally invented by a woman, Izumo no Okuni. It soon became fashionable and women would appear dressed like men on the stage as a front for --unlicensed and unregulated-- prostitution, so the shogun prohibited women on the stage. They were replaced by crossdressing teenage boys as a front for prostitution, so the shogun banned young boys from the stage. They were replaced by crossdressing adult men who also engaged in prostitution sometimes, at which point the shogunate gave up and only repressed actors when they were causing scandals.
Anyway, Portuguese priests in the 16th century like Francisco Cabral were already being shocked by public nudity and widespread homosexuality in the samurai class, so it wasn't unique to the Americans.
posted by sukeban at 1:34 AM on May 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
It's simplified
To illustrate Tokugawa attitudes to control of sexuality, kabuki was originally invented by a woman, Izumo no Okuni. It soon became fashionable and women would appear dressed like men on the stage as a front for --unlicensed and unregulated-- prostitution, so the shogun prohibited women on the stage. They were replaced by crossdressing teenage boys as a front for prostitution, so the shogun banned young boys from the stage. They were replaced by crossdressing adult men who also engaged in prostitution sometimes, at which point the shogunate gave up and only repressed actors when they were causing scandals.
Anyway, Portuguese priests in the 16th century like Francisco Cabral were already being shocked by public nudity and widespread homosexuality in the samurai class, so it wasn't unique to the Americans.
posted by sukeban at 1:34 AM on May 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
The Tokugawa government controlled sexuality very tightly, not in the pro-*prohibition* sense that is closer to Western societies but under tight *regulation* to avoid anti-government activities.
But the government's practices weren't caused by the influence of Western prudishness as the video conveys, were they? Did Japan really need to be infected by a "disease" of Western values for any of this? Maybe the post-WWII occupation served as a catalyst for the re-popularization of Hokusai-influenced pornography in the late twentieth century but I'd be surprised if anything more than the timing in some cases can be attributed to Western influence. A sophisticated, deep-historied civilization like Japan is entirely capable of coming up with restrictive sexual mores and government repression on its own.
(But if there's really evidence that Japan was like the Garden of Eden sexually, at all levels of society, before the Portuguese and Dutch showed up and gave them the Apple of Knowledge, I'd certainly like to hear it.)
posted by XMLicious at 3:12 AM on May 15, 2016
We're talking about two different kinds of censorship. The Tokugawa government cared about sedition, not so much morals, so actually the censorship of ukiyo-e fell the hardest on political criticism (as in the Ehon Taikouki incident), not on porn. Theatre was also heavily censored for political commentary, so when the story of the 47 Ronin was adapted to puppet theatre and kabuki, they had to move the setting in the past to the Kamakura shogunate and change all the names of the characters, fooling exactly no one.
Come the Meiji era, the new government was intent to be seen as civilized and equivalent to the Western powers (in part to get rid of the inequal treaties), so they tried to reform Japanese society to fit with Western ideals and this meant Victorian prudishness.
Maybe the post-WWII occupation served as a catalyst for the re-popularization of Hokusai-influenced pornography in the late twentieth century
No, it just used black bars to censor genitals and later on the famous pixels. The case of Rokudenashiko and her vagina kayak that is still going on the news only shows that female genitalia are still verboten as long as the government is concerned.
But if there's really evidence that Japan was like the Garden of Eden sexually, at all levels of society, before the Portuguese and Dutch showed up and gave them the Apple of Knowledge, I'd certainly like to hear it
Of course not, did you miss the bit about little girls being sold to brothels as what amounted to sex slaves? Also, whatever the Portuguese or the Dutch thought was irrelevant to the Tokugawa bakufu... not that they could protest, the VOC in Japan was very careful to appear submissive to the Tokugawa shoguns.
posted by sukeban at 4:22 AM on May 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Come the Meiji era, the new government was intent to be seen as civilized and equivalent to the Western powers (in part to get rid of the inequal treaties), so they tried to reform Japanese society to fit with Western ideals and this meant Victorian prudishness.
Maybe the post-WWII occupation served as a catalyst for the re-popularization of Hokusai-influenced pornography in the late twentieth century
No, it just used black bars to censor genitals and later on the famous pixels. The case of Rokudenashiko and her vagina kayak that is still going on the news only shows that female genitalia are still verboten as long as the government is concerned.
But if there's really evidence that Japan was like the Garden of Eden sexually, at all levels of society, before the Portuguese and Dutch showed up and gave them the Apple of Knowledge, I'd certainly like to hear it
Of course not, did you miss the bit about little girls being sold to brothels as what amounted to sex slaves? Also, whatever the Portuguese or the Dutch thought was irrelevant to the Tokugawa bakufu... not that they could protest, the VOC in Japan was very careful to appear submissive to the Tokugawa shoguns.
posted by sukeban at 4:22 AM on May 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
The Utamaro wiki article has a paragraph on the Ehon Taikouki incident:
posted by sukeban at 4:44 AM on May 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
In 1804, at the height of his success, he ran into legal trouble by publishing prints related to a banned historical novel. The prints, entitled Hideyoshi and his Five Concubines, depicted the wife and concubines of the military ruler, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who lived from 1536 to 1598. Consequently, Utamaro was accused of insulting the real Hideyoshi's dignity. He was sentenced to be handcuffed for fifty days (some accounts say he briefly was imprisoned). According to some sources, the experience crushed him emotionally and ended his career as an artist.Note that Utamaro published more than 30 shunga books (NSFW) that did *not* get him in trouble.
posted by sukeban at 4:44 AM on May 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I had a girlfriend in the '90s who owned Legend of the Overfiend on VHS. She was something else.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:37 AM on May 15, 2016
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:37 AM on May 15, 2016
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posted by sukeban at 12:09 PM on May 14, 2016 [2 favorites]